This invention relates to a cabinet for an electronic device inside which electronic components are housed, and an electronic device having such cabinet.
There has long been a demand that video game machines and other electronic devices be made smaller in order to improve their portability and ease of handling. One way to achieve such smaller device size would be to reduce the thickness of the cabinet in which the main body of the electronic device is housed (hereafter called the cabinet), making the electronic device smaller while securing a volume of space in which to accommodate the main body.
The usual way to make such a cabinet for housing a device main body is to contact the ends of a pair of housing members that have a cross-section in the shape of a squared-off C, so as to oppose them to each other at upper and lower positions.
However, because the housing members that form the cabinet are generally formed with a resin that has a wide range of uses, such as ABS resin (a resin made with acrylnitryl-butadiene-styrene copolymer), sufficient rigidity of a cabinet cannot be ensured if, in order to make the device smaller, the thickness is reduced too much.
Thus in the structure of a conventional cabinet, the cabinet cannot be made too thin in the pursuit of a smaller device size, and it has been difficult to reduce the size of the electronic device because of this problem.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a cabinet of an electronic device that ensures sufficient rigidity even if made thin, and an electronic device that promotes a smaller size by the use of such cabinet.
A cabinet for an electronic device according to the present invention is one which houses therein electronic components that form the electronic device, wherein the cabinet has a chassis on which electronic components are provided and a pair of housing members that hold the chassis therebetween and house the electronic components.
Due to the present invention, the chassis serves as a reinforcing material, making it possible to improve the rigidity of the cabinet. Therefore, sufficient rigidity for the cabinet can be ensured even if the thickness of the housing members is reduced to achieve a smaller size.
In this invention, preferably, one of the pair of housing members may have a smaller volume than another housing member and the cabinet may be constituted asymrnmetrically relative to the chassis.
In this way, the components that take up relatively little space, such as circuit boards, are accommodated in the smaller-volume housing member, and the components that take up relatively large space, such as power source units or disk drives, are accommodated in the larger-volume housing member, thus making it possible to efficiently utilize the space inside the cabinet so as to minimize empty space.
It is preferable that the aforesaid pair of housing members and chassis may be made integral by a screw inserted into a screw hole formed in one of the pair of housing members.
In this way, the pair of housing members and chassis can be made integral by connecting them once with a single screw, thus facilitating the cabinet assembly operation.
If the screw hole is formed only in one of the housing members, then by taking as the base the surface in which the screw hole is formed, one can hide that screw hole and the screw, etc. inserted into this screw hole, thereby improving the appearance of the cabinet.
In this invention, a rear surface part that covers the rear surface of the cabinet for an electronic device may preferably be provided on the chassis.
In this way, the components of the electronic device provided on the rear surface part of the cabinet, such as a power switch exposed on the rear surface of the cabinet and an exhaust fan installed on the back side of the rear surface, can be previously provided on the chassis, thus making the electronic device easier to assemble than if the components on the rear surface were fabricated separately.
In addition, an electronic device of the present invention includes said cabinet.
According to the present invention, because the electronic device has a cabinet whose rigidity is ensured even if it is thin, the prescribed volume of space inside the cabinet is also ensured, and to the extent that the cabinet is made thinner, a smaller size for the electronic device can be achieved.
In this invention, the electronic device may have a power source circuit board for supplying the power source and a control board to control the electronic device, and the power source circuit board and control board may preferably be arranged on opposite sides with the chassis between them.
Thus the chassis serves as a partition between the power source circuit board and the control board, making it possible to increase the insulation surface distance (the electrical insulation distance) between the boards, thus simply preventing the phenomenon of electrical discharge between said boards. In this way, if the boards are arranged near the chassis, the space inside the cabinet can be used efficiently, and the electronic device can be made even smaller.